his gaze and doesn’t offer me any sort of readable emotion on his stoic face. “Okay.”
“Damn it, Ran! It makes me feel good, and then it makes me feel absolutely horrible.”
“Right, because it makes you feel guilty.”
I throw my hands in the air and rip at the roots of my hair, completely disheveling the ponytail that held it all securely there. “Yes. It makes me feel incredibly guilty. Just like with the accident, just like with the cancer—knowing that my mom is just as miserable now as she was back then makes me feel guilty, because it makes me feel good. Because somehow, just like in those other scenarios, I’m getting something out of it. Like I’m benefiting from someone else’s pain.”
“Stop.” It’s just one word, yet it cuts at me more than anything he’s ever said.
I battle with the water that laces around my eyes by blinking rapidly until I win and they stay put. “I can’t.”
My gaze is drawn to the shadows that slip across the wall and indicate the party downstairs might finally be wrapping up. The way the headlights slide over the furniture as a vehicle backs out of the driveway streaks white lines across my room.
“Yes, you can.” Ran’s tone is controlled.
I bite down so hard on my cheek that I taste the tinge of blood that seeps out of it. “I don’t know that I want to.” Shaking my head, I say, “It’s like I deserve it. It’s like the guilt is my punishment.”
Ran looks at me with worried eyes and then does the very last thing I’d expect when he crosses his arms over his body, grasps the hem of his shirt, and swiftly lifts it over his head. His upper half is exposed; his tattoos are dark against the fair hue of his skin, the contrast only intensified from the window light.
Taking my hand within his, Ran pulls out my index finger from my balled up fist and runs it over his chest slowly—deliberately—like a pen inscribing a word on a paper. My breath shakes out of me and I know my hand is trembling because I feel the effects of it radiating up my arm to my elbow, pulling the hairs up right along with it. But Ran just clamps down harder and doesn’t remove his eyes from mine. It’s one of the most intense things I’ve ever done, and at the same time, the most terrifying.
“Ransomed.” He says the word as a whisper, and my finger follows along like it’s aiding in his pronunciation of it. “You know when I got this?”
Feeling his bare chest on my skin, even though it’s just under the surface of such a small patch of it, makes me unbearably lightheaded. Ran keeps his hand coiled around my finger, and if he weren’t doing so, I’d have the compulsion to press my entire hand upon his chest. To press myself to him completely.
“I don’t know,” I say with more nerves than I can contain. “When you got the others you drew back in high school?”
“No, Maggie. That’s not when.” Ran shakes his head and his dark hair falls across his forehead. “I got it when I finally gave up the guilt I had for being glad that my parents OD’d.”
My finger slips from his hand and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve drawn it back, or if he’s loosened his grip. “Oh.”
“I found out they were dead when I was fifteen. Evidently, they were on some three-day binge or something.” Ran threads his fingers behind his neck and wrings it back and forth. “You know how I celebrated? I went to a party and got drunk and hooked up with a random girl.”
“And was that the night you…?” I start to ask.
“I needed to escape from it, Maggie. Not just from the fact that they were dead, but from the irrational way it made me feel to hear the news. I needed to find something to replace all of the conflicting emotions.” He lifts his shirt from its crumpled position on the comforter and slides it back over his head. “But then all those escapes led to more guilt, because I was using one hurt to cover up another. I started hating myself just as much as I hated them.”
The depth in his eyes, the vulnerability in his voice—I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life. I’d always thought that crying was something you did over things that were sad. But the urge